The Army has agreed to drop two misconduct charges against Iraq war resister First Lieutenant Ehren Watada. The agreement knocks two years off from a maximum six-year prison sentence he had faced at a court-martial scheduled to begin next week in Fort Lewis. Lieutenant Watada is the first commissioned officer to refuse to serve in the Iraq war. As part of the agreement, the Army has dropped its subpoena of two journalists in exchange for Lieutenant Watada's admission that he made statements critical of the Iraq war. [includes rush transcript]

In an effort to prove those statements in court, the Army had subpoenaed independent journalist Sarah Olson and Greg Kakesako of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin and was prepared to compel them to testify or face up to six months in prison under contempt charges. Last week I interviewed Lieutenant Watada and I asked him about the issue of press freedom in his case.

• Lt. Ehren Watada: "Once you start using reporters to testify against their sources, what -- not just war resisters -- what whistleblowers, what minority opinions will be willing to go out there and testify to reporters in order to get the truth out, if they know that the government will use those reporters to testify against them? And I think that becomes very dangerous in our society, and it’s going to have a chilling effect that’s going to stifle free speech. It’s going to stifle people having the courage to bring the truth out. And it’s going to stifle the freedom of the press."
• A petition against the Army's subpoenas of the journalists in Watada's case had drawn widespread support. Sarah Olson if one of those two journalists. She joins me on the line from California.
• Sarah Olson, independent journalist